Critics slam ABC for launching new Autistic AF podcast with former Australian of the Year Grace Tame

A new podcast launched by former Australian of the year Grace Tame and the ABC has been slammed by critics who have accused the national broadcaster of being “tone-deaf.”

The four-past series called Autistic AF delves into Ms Tame’s experiences of being an autistic woman and includes interviews with experts and other women.

But Australian Jewish Association chief executive Robert Gregory criticised the ABC for hiring Ms Tame after recent controversies that have plagued the child sexual abuse advocate.

“Not long after the Bondi attack, Grace Tame publicly called to ‘globalise the intifada’. The intifada was a period of bloody terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians in Israel,” he said.

“Just months ago, Tame dismissed reports of sexual violence committed against Israeli women on October 7 as ‘propaganda’ and falsely claimed they had been ‘debunked’ despite extensive evidence and investigations documenting those crimes.

“Tame was condemned across the political spectrum and has publicly complained about difficulties obtaining speaking engagements following her comments, but it appears that nothing is too outrageous for the ABC.

“This decision demonstrates a profound lack of judgment and a disregard for the concerns of many Australians, particularly within the Jewish community.”

The podcast was launched months after Ms Tame lost speaking gigs around the nation in what she described as an “ongoing national smear campaign”.

Ms Tame made headlines this year when she was filmed chanting “globalise the intifada” at a pro Palestine rally and was labelled “difficult by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The Australian Jewish Association requested that Ms Tame be removed as guest speaker at a Bendigo Women’s Day breakfast.

She defended her actions in an interview with ABC radio host Hamish McDonald, saying she was a human-rights activist who advocated for the safety of all human beings, no matter their background.

But she was criticised by the National Council of Jewish Women Australia when she claimed allegations that Israeli women had faced sexual violence during the Hamas attack in October 2023 were false.

“Those things have been debunked … violence is happening on both sides. But this is not a fair fight. We’re not talking about two equal cohorts, even marginally,” she told McDonald.

The council responded by saying Tame’s comments were “a complete wilful distortion of facts”.

“We cannot comprehend why somebody who claims to fight for the victims of sexual abuse makes such an exception when those victims are Jews,” it said in a statement.

Away from the controversy, Ms Tame said she wanted the podcast to explore how autism in women was markedly different and give women with autism a voice.

“Usually, I’m the person being interrogated, not that there was any interrogation going on here,” she told ABC Perth.

“It was a very gentle, explorative process, but I really loved listening to the expertise and lived experience of women who are autistic and who have dedicated their lives to understanding different brains.”

Ms Tame was diagnosed with autism at 19 and said it could be confronting. She said it was common for women to be diagnosed later in life because they tended to be better at masking and internalising their needs over others.

She said when a person went for such a long time without their needs being met it could accumulate into stress, health issues and mental illness.

“It’s really sad when you finally get a diagnosis and realise, well, if I had been diagnosed much earlier in my life, like boys are usually diagnosed in primary school,” she said.

“If I had been diagnosed much earlier in my life, perhaps I wouldn’t have gone down this path of, you know, being misdiagnosed or just not meeting needs that really needed to be met.”

Ms Tame said after her own diagnosis a lot of things in her life made sense.

“I was pretty reticent to take on board any other kind of label or identifying marker, I suppose, because I was still reeling from fresh trauma, and then I just needed a little bit of space,” she told ABC Perth.

“But it certainly did re-contextualise a lot of things and filled in missing links, and looking through that lens, I felt incredibly validated when I finally got around to actually consider consuming the resources there and getting tailored supports.”